Part I
EdPuzzle is an Education Technology Tool privately held by EdPuzzle General Information. With Quim Sabria being its Co-Founder, CEO, and President, it aims to provide a platform that helps teachers engage with their students in course materials by using interactive video lessons. The tool empowers the teachers to make videos for their lessons with easy-to-use video editing tools and hassle-free analytics showing the studentsās results, enabling the users to make compelling infographics simply by copying and pasting data into a template. The platform does well in what it says, and from my personal use of the platform, I found it very convenient in inserting videos from platforms such as YouTube, and create different types of questions about the videos as a teacher, and then observe the analytical results of the answers from the students. (pitchbook.com)
Part II
When logging in to the website and use the functions EdPuzzle provides, one has to enter the e-mail address, the institutions associated, as well as the role as a teacher or a student. One does not have to provide a real name in order to log in and use the platform, but e-mail address could be linked to individuals using the platform, which suggests that the platform is not completely anonymous.
While third-parties with access to information are required to provide the same security protections as the EdPuzzle company does, it is unclear whether multi-factor account protection is available. The platform claims that the users retain ownership of their own data created, and the data are stored in an encrypted format to add safety to the privacy of the usersā IP.
The security of the data and the ownership of the data suggest that EdPuzzle is fairly safe for in-class use with teachers setting up questions in the videos for the students to engage in the materials with more interactive and effective approaches. It also means that the creators of the contents on EdPuzzle platform own the data, and other people, even the Co-founders of the platform cannot access, use, copy, or own these contents without the consent of the creators. (commonsense. org)
Part III
EdPuzzle is designed for learners to interact with educational contents with skill-based questions, the visual contents empowers the comprehension of the students, and the auto-generated evaluations help the teachers design more personalized approaches to meet the studentsā needs with regard to the students various backgrounds and learning habits.
EdPuzzle meets the needs of UDL by helping the teachers understand the students various needs and problems upon providing analytic assessments generated from the interactions students have with the educational video contents. The bite-sized lessons could also make the teaching more flexible from the teachersā sides, giving the students more choice on their own learning pace. With the function of open-ended questions, as well as other types of questions that test the students levels of understanding of the contents, the teachers could receive individualized information about the students understanding, and then provide individualized aids to help with the studentsā learning process.
However, EdPuzzle is designed mainly for video contents, and the question settings and contents provided are all visual, which may exclude learners with visual disabilities or sometimes hearing disabilities. It may also exclude learners who have problems accessing fast-speed internet, or accessing internet at all, since the platform is internet-based. Besides, learners could only access to limited information of the topic introduced, because the video contents are chosen/created by the teachers. Learners cannot access to other types of contents from the platform, which means that they do not have a choice on the educational contents that would meet their special needs or learning habits. It may cause the gap in learning and understanding the course contents between students who are suited for the teachersā teaching style, and the students who may not fit well with the teachersā way of conducting the course.
Overall, I do think that EdPuzzle offer the teachers and students a way that learning could most deeply and intimately begin, because the platform enables the teachers and students to interact and communicate through the contents created that evaluations the students various learning results and understanding of the materials, and helps the teachers engage in the students learning by providing individualized help and guide. The students could also use the platform with more flexibility by deciding their own paces. (edpuzzle.com)
Reflection
I chose this activity because I think evaluating Education Technology Tools using the prompt questions presented by Stommel and Morris could really help me understand these platforms better from an educational perspective, as well as data privacy and safety perspective. By reflectively thinking the pros and cons of the platform, I had to look up the information related to the ownership of the website, the contents created by the users, as well as the data safety issues, which tells us what organizations and what parties may have threatens to the data created by the users of the platform. This insight can be valuable to educators-to-be, and is necessary for students and teachers who are using education technolgy tools on a daily basis in school learning.
Sources Cited:
https://pitchbook.com/profiles/company/88450-30#funding
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